Whiting chicks

[Camocole 0]

I have a farm with chickens, guineas, rabbits, etc

 

And I seen that whiting gives murray mcmurray chikens that lay blue eggs. Which gave me the idea "what if I can buy the real deal" so there my question can I buy whiting chicks

The other reason is I live far out like big foot sleeps in my back yard. So its hard to just say oh ill just stroll to the store and get some hackle.

[flytire 0]

call whiting farms

 

phone: 970-874-0999 fax: 970-874-7078

[Saltybum 0]

Let us know the chicks do.

[SilverCreek 0]

They do not sell eggs or chicks. They spent big $$$ developiing their line of genetic hackle so they do NOT sell fertilized eggs or chicks. In fact they have security to see that none leave the farm.

[eastern fly 0]

Having a few beers and tying flies. When I seen the title my eyes seen something else. WO,. not what I was thinking LOL

 

Kevin

[add147 0]

Let us know the chicks do.

No joke!!! If they're good looking chicks I definitely want to meet them....LOL...

 

Am just kidding...It would be interesting to see how they go about getting the genetics all down to produce a quality product.

[FlaFly 0]

Maybe you can't buy Whiting's chicks but no reason you can't develop your own. One nice things about chickens is that they have short generations... grow to reproductive maturity fairly fast, so you could get a bunch of Araucana chicks (that is the most common blue egg chicken) and after a couple of years of selective breeding you could have some prize chicks (keep the hens and roosters separate, then pick the best hackle producers to breed for several successive generations). The other nice thing is that you can have lots of eggs to either sell or share with neighbors, and lots of fried chicken.

[1hook 0]

Some one was doing that, I think it was on this forum but could have been another.

 

I know his chicks were coming along nicely not sure what ever came of it

[FlaFly 0]

A friend of mine had a silver laced Wyandotte rooster whose saddle hackle actually drug the ground! One day I discovered she had given it away to someone for eating since she had several younger and preferred roosters. Man, what a heartbreaker!

[Camocole 0]

A friend of mine had a silver laced Wyandotte rooster whose saddle hackle actually drug the ground! One day I discovered she had given it away to someone for eating since she had several younger and preferred roosters. Man, what a heartbreaker!

Thats a let down I have silver laced wyandottes but their crossed with something, can you breed guines till you get like a super guinea?

[SilverCreek 0]

Maybe you can't buy Whiting's chicks but no reason you can't develop your own. One nice things about chickens is that they have short generations... grow to reproductive maturity fairly fast, so you could get a bunch of Araucana chicks (that is the most common blue egg chicken) and after a couple of years of selective breeding you could have some prize chicks (keep the hens and roosters separate, then pick the best hackle producers to breed for several successive generations). The other nice thing is that you can have lots of eggs to either sell or share with neighbors, and lots of fried chicken.

 

Genetic hackle breeding began in the 1940s with the Harry Darbee line of chickens which then spread to many different breeders. Even Tom Whiting began with the Hebert and Hoffman genetic lines of hackle producing chickens.

 

None of the current brands of hackle growers actually began with regular chickens. They all have built upon decades of work by previous breeders. Plus the early individual breeders specialized in breeding certain types of hackle. For example, Hoffman specialized in Grizzly and that is why Whiting has the best Grizzly hackle because he got all of Hoffman's genetic Grizzly line. Metz worked on developing Ginger and Badger and Ted Hebert on Dun.

 

So if someone were to start today with egg laying or roaster chickens, they literally would be 75 years behind where we are now and they would not have any pure colors that are as good as the colors we now have. Since multiple growers were separatley deveoping colors simultaneously, the number of years to get quality hackle in all colors is hundreds of man years of breeding.

 

I have also read that part of breeding hackle chickens is breeding them to have longer legs. As the hackle got longer, they started dragging and damaging the tips. So the chickens were bred for longer legs to keep the hackles from dragging.

 

http://cgtu.org/documents/publications/genetic_hackle.pdf

 

"Dr. Whiting says breeding chickens to produce better hackle than the previous generations is a "numbers game." He produces 125,000 chickens per year, and every bird is inspected and "flagged" if it is considered a potential breeder. Whiting himself sometimes looks at more than 900 flagged chickens per day when the stock matures, and selects only about 11/2 percent of the candidates as potential breeding stock. He writes a 3- page report on each of these birds, collects feather samples, and turns the data over to his head grader for a second opinion. The head grader has a checklist of more than 80 attributes he looks for in a feather sample--qualities like feather length and symmetry, barb density and stiffness, and quill quality, among others. The hackle grader ties flies with every sample and writes an exhaustive evaluation that, with Dr. Whiting's report, determines the next generation of breeders. "

[Cold 0]

...and here I was expecting the fly tying equivalent of Miller Lite girls...

[Camocole 0]

...and here I was expecting the fly tying equivalent of Miller Lite girls...

Here you go

[trevinski 0]

My mother had a grizzly rooster that had a nice saddle on him. He ended up getting killed by a neighbor dog so I now have his whole skin. I had to shampoo and condition it after the dog but it has a lot of great #10 size + hackles. It's not as near as nice as a whiting but it can tie a bundle of flies.

[FlaFly 0]

Yeah Henry, but think of the fun and enjoyment of being able to make his own hackle strain, even though it may not be as great as the commercial lines. If I lived where I could raise chickens, I'd sure as heck try. As for dragging the ground, maybe he can rig up some chicken stilts. :-)

 

Camacole... you don't happen to have a picture of that skin? Like to see it.